WASHINGTON, May 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Journalists, rights activists and U.N. leaders marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday warnings that the independence of the media worldwide faced a growing threat from repressive governments, criminals and extremism. 

Among them, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a report Friday stating the West Bank was the worst place for journalists as hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government “has used extraordinary force to keep journalists from covering its recent military incursion.” 

Among the incidents and charges levied against Israel are Israeli troops firing stun grenades and rubber bullets at reporters waiting outside the Ramallah compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli soldiers firing live rounds at working reporters, detaining several journalists, confiscating film or press cards from others, ransacking the offices of private West Bank television and radio stations, and repeatedly attacking the Palestinian National Authority's broadcasting facilities in violation of international humanitarian law, stated the CPJ. 

Israeli officials have also expelled one foreign correspondent and refused to accredit Palestinian journalists. 

As of Thursday, Israeli forces are keeping a Reuters journalist, Jussry al-Jamal, a Palestinian cameraman, in detention for a third day. Israeli officials declined to explain why Jamal, 23, had been detained and gave no details of his whereabouts, reports news agencies. 

Israeli authorities have also held Hossam Abu Alan, a Palestinian photographer with the French news agency Agence France Presse, for eight days without explanation. 

Colombia, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Belarus, Burma, Zimbabwe, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Cuba completed CPJ's list of worst places to be a journalist. 

Pakistan, where Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl was kidnapped and murdered earlier this year, did not make the list, reports news agencies. 

The Paris-based watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) also demanded Friday that Israel release seven Palestinian journalists detained as part of the recent military operation in the West Bank, reports news agencies. 

"We ask you to cease attacking journalists, especially those who are Palestinian," RSF secretary-general Robert Menard said in a letter to Sharon. 

The United Nations, for its part, warned that media independence faced a double threat from “terrorism,” saying journalists faced not only violence and intimidation, but also government restrictions. 

In a joint declaration, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and UNESCO chief Koichiro Matsuura said journalists faced the indirect threat of terrorism through attempts to intimidate or instill fear and suspicion, or to silence dissent. 

But another danger arises when governments, responding to perceived terrorist threats, adopt laws, regulations and forms of surveillance that undermine rights and freedoms, they warned. 

"Indeed, in the name of anti-terrorism, principles and values that were decades, even centuries in the making may be put at risk," the three top U.N. officials said. 

They said press freedom and free speech must be protected as a means through which the fight against terrorism could be waged, and urged members of the media not to be cowed by threats or to become a mouthpiece for patriotic propaganda. 

"The greatest service that the media can perform in the fight against terrorism is to act freely, independently and responsibly," they said. 

"A responsible press, moreover, is a self-regulated press. The temptation to impose drastic state regulation upon the media must be resisted," they said. 

The stark warning came as a ruling was postponed until next week in Zimbabwe against three journalists arrested this week for alleged "abuse of journalistic privilege" under the country's new media law. 

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe enacted tough new rules over the media just days after his controversial re-election in March and despite a barrage of international criticism over the measure. 

The six-week old press law gives Information Minister Jonathan Moyo sweeping powers to decide who can work as a journalist and to discipline journalists through a newly created commission. 

Zimbabwe, meanwhile, was cited Friday in the annual report by RSF as the second "most repressive" African nation for press freedoms, behind Eritrea. 

The report noted that press freedom remains under siege in Africa, despite rare cases of improvement, as journalists face widespread persecution, though it noted no journalists were killed in Africa while doing their work. 

RSF also protested on Friday against the sentence handed down to the editor of an Iranian regional weekly for "insulting values of the Islamic revolution and false reporting". 

In Equatorial Guinea, the authorities had barred an independent weekly paper and the Press Association of Equatorial Guinea (ASOPGE) from marking world press freedom day. 

In Russia, where human rights groups and liberal politicians say there has been a crackdown on the media's freedom since President Vladimir Putin's election in 2000, the authorities were accused Friday by human rights ombudsman Oleg Mironov of stifling journalistic activity. 

"The authorities at all levels do not want to recognize the mass media as a mediator between the citizens and the authorities," Mironov said. 

"There are cases when independent journalists are pressured, and not only economically. They are persecuted, threatened, they get killed by paid assassins, they go missing," he was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.